


The Only Ten I See

by 94BottlesOfSnapple



Series: Tumblr Ficlets [15]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, Matt Murdock Is Not Actually Hot, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Oblivious Foggy Nelson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:34:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21541537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/94BottlesOfSnapple/pseuds/94BottlesOfSnapple
Summary: In which Foggy finds out that, no, it's not an objective universal truth - he's the only one who thinks Matt's ungodly beautiful.Probably because he's actually in love with him.
Relationships: Franklin "Foggy" Nelson & Karen Page, Franklin "Foggy" Nelson & Marci Stahl, Franklin "Foggy" Nelson & Misty Knight, Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Series: Tumblr Ficlets [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1419673
Comments: 41
Kudos: 297





	The Only Ten I See

**Author's Note:**

> You can find this fic on tumblr [here](https://pomegranate-belle.tumblr.com/post/188710926835/fic-or-treat-how-about-smth-based-on-your-post)

Matt Murdock is pretty much the hottest guy on the planet. It’s an objective fact. There’s a lot of times Foggy despairs of this, but he’s never once questioned it; his best friend is a solid 10/10. Probably 11/10 when he does that one really sappy smile that only makes an appearance when he’s completely at ease or super drunk.

Misty Knight does not seem to agree, based on the unimpressed look on her face.

And look, there’s no accounting for taste, but Matt’s on another level. His appeal is undeniably universal. Like, as much as people have teased Foggy about fawning over Matt, it’s not gay or anything. Really. He’s just secure enough in his masculinity to be able to recognize how unfairly smokin’ hot his bff is. It’s a purely platonic observation, and the proof is that everyone else thinks Matt’s hot too.

“He’s not hot,” Misty says flatly, pushing Foggy’s phone back to the center of the cafe table.

It’s got one of Foggy’s best pictures of Matt on it — sitting at his desk in their office, hands scanning over some document or other and a look of intense concentration on his face. The lighting’s just right to show the red in his glasses and highlight his jaw.

“Are you high?” Foggy demands, jabbing a finger at the screen. “Just look at him! He’s beautiful!”

Misty snorts, then puts up her hands when Foggy glares at her.

“Look,” she begins, very obviously and condescendingly humoring him, “I’m not saying he’s ugly or anything, but when you say ‘ungodly man-beauty’ I expect to see some, y’know, ungodly man beauty. This? This is a generic-looking white boy.”

She’s lost it. That’s the only explanation. There’s nothing generic about Matt. Foggy tells her so, and her eyes sharpen a little with interest, though her mouth stays firmly in that ‘oh you poor fool’ smirk. In truth, maybe challenging a headstrong detective isn’t the smartest move; Misty is very perceptive. Not that Foggy has anything to hide. Because he doesn’t. And even if he did, he’s not necessarily known for making smart, rational decisions. Case in point: knocking out mobsters with a baseball bat, associating with someone reckless enough to earn the moniker Daredevil, and dating Marci Stahl not just once but twice.

Misty spins the phone back around and takes a second look, but there’s no dawning realization in her eyes. She shakes her head.

“And you couldn’t have gotten a picture sometime after he remembered how to use a razor?” she asks.

Foggy, of course, is offended on behalf of Matt’s pleasantly stubbly jaw. Matt looks good all the time, but he looks a lot less baby-faced with a little bit of facial hair — Foggy’s not sure whether a full-on beard would work well for Matt, but the stubble looks just right.

“The scruffiness is part of his charm!” he insists.

“He looks like a sad hobo in a business suit,” comes Misty’s totally ruthless reply.

Foggy has to gather his phone to his chest to protect Matt’s picture from such hurtful words.

“Sad hobo? We’re not talking about Rand again, are we? Because I got an earful from Hogarth the last time I suggested someone that rich should get better-fitted suits,” a familiar voice cuts in.

“Marci!” Foggy perks up — at last, a voice of cold, neutral sanity! “You’re finally here!”

Marci rolls her eyes, but she’s smiling with one eyebrow quirked and her arms subtly open — her usual ‘give me a hug’ posture.

“You didn’t think I’d miss a girls’ day out, did you?”

There’s a sudden, unexpected rush of relief and joy through Foggy’s veins as he thinks about their rekindled friendship. No matter how rough their first breakup was or how awkward their second, he’d missed her a lot in the years they weren’t speaking. He slips his phone into his pocket, then folds Marci into a hug.

“It’s good to see you too, Foggy Bear. I hear it’s been a busy month for you. Getting into heated disagreements with law enforcement again?”

As if he does it all the time! Really, it’s just bickering with Brett. And the people on the vigilante task forces. And those guys who’d been hassling Luke. And… Ok, maybe she has a point. Foggy clears his throat.

“Listen, that’s not important. I need you to tell Misty that she’s crazy. She says Matt’s not objectively attractive. But you saw, he had tons of dates in college, obviously all the girls thought he was hot.”

Marci gives Foggy a pitying smile that begins to erode his confidence with stomach-twisting effectiveness.

“Sweetie, the reason Murdock got so many dates was because he was confident but not a sexist jackhole.” She smirks. “Well. And because he was a big slut and everybody knew it. It’s not like there weren’t hotter guys on campus.”

“Name one,” Foggy orders, putting his hands on his hips like his Ma used to whenever he and Theo broke a window with their baseball.

Marci is a known bitch so she begins listing people off on her fingers.

“That guy Wyatt that Jen Walters started dating after you two broke up. The exchange student from Wakanda that quit second year. Eddie Brock on a good day. Sam Wilson every day. Cranston that one time in 2L when he was definitely trying to score with you. Shall I go on?”

“Tried to—” Foggy’s head is spinning, and he loses whatever argument he’d been cooking up about Matt’s hotness relative to these other guys. “Larry Cranston was a straight up _dick_ , he never tried to score with me!”

“He definitely tried to score with you,” insists Marci. “At that post-midterm party first semester. But he’d already insulted Murdock by that point so you’d erased him from your dating pool and didn’t notice.”

“Well— then good riddance,” Foggy decides.

He continues to argue with Marci and Misty both until Karen arrives. Her face tells Foggy she’s somewhere between concerned and amused, but not enough to stop over before she’s got her drink in hand.

“The last time I saw you this fired up you were taking DA Tower to task,” she greets him. “What’s going on?”

“These two—” Foggy gestures at Marci and Misty— “have clearly lost it.”

“You’re the odd one out here,” says Misty.

But if he can get Karen to join his side, he won’t be — it’ll be fifty-fifty again.

“Look, unlike everyone else in this room she actually dated Matt, she’s got to agree with me. He’s objectively super hot, right, Karen?”

Karen blinks. Then she glances out the window and takes a long, awkward slurp of her coffee. Foggy throws his hands in the air. His perception of the world is literally crumbling around him. Or else everyone else has gone nuts.

“Karen, come on!” Foggy all but pleads. “You _dated_ him!”

“Because he was really sweet to me! It’s not like someone has to be Adonis for me to date them, Foggy, I’m not that shallow! I mean, I like how he looks well enough, but he’s not as hot as, I don’t know, Idris Elba or Jason Momoa or somebody.”

She seems unbothered by the assertion. But, the thing is… Well, movie stars are all well and good, Foggy supposes, but they don’t have Matt’s… Matt-ness. That perfect, undefinable, essence-of-Matt thing that accentuates his natural beauty. Foggy doesn’t know how even Karen could have missed it, but Foggy’s got evidence on his side. He thumbs through the photos on his phone again, stopping on one from a couple months ago.

It’s of Matt, obviously. A closer shot, facing him head on. His hair is ruffled, his glasses are off, and there are small, happy little crinkles at the corner of his eyes. His smile is earnest and stunning. There’s a single fading bruise on his jaw. It’s Foggy’s absolute favorite picture of Matt, incontrovertible proof that Matt’s happiness isn’t trapped in rosy memories of the past. Proof that Daredevil is still Matt, still Foggy’s Matt, that the solid core of their friendship was never a lie.

Foggy wasn’t gonna use this — his final resort — because it’s… It’s private, and close to his heart. Matt keeps these smiles hidden, doesn’t show them to just anybody or for just any reason. It makes Foggy feel like he should guard them too. But the others just don’t get it, and Foggy’s determined to make them understand. Squaring his shoulders, he shoves his phone at Misty.

“There!” he snaps. “Ok? Just— just look at that smile and tell me he’s only average!”

Misty accepts the phone and studies the picture on it for a long, long time.

“I’ll give you the smile,” she admits at last, handing it back. “It is a nice one. But it still only bumps him up to 7/10.”

Foggy’s jaw drops.

“That’s ridiculous!”

“It isn’t though, Foggy Bear,” sighs Marci, raking her manicured nails through her hair. “It’s totally reasonable, you just can’t make an objective judgment because you’re literally in love with him.”

Foggy laughs, but it sounds strained and hysterical even to his own ears.

“Of course I’m not in love with him.”

Karen reaches out and squeezes his shoulder with a look on her face that makes Foggy want to scream.

“Foggy…”

“I’m not!”

Because he’s not. He isn’t, he can’t be. He can’t be in love with Matt, because that would suck. Not loving Matt, any idiot would be lucky to do that, but… Matt has a Type. And regardless of what Marci and Misty and Karen say about Matt’s own attractiveness, it’s at least true that the people Matt goes for are always super beautiful women. That being the criteria, Foggy’s a perfect zero out of a hundred. Being in love with Matt would be an exercise in futility, and more than a little pathetic.

“I’m not, I…” Foggy tries again, staring down at the picture of Matt smiling. “I…” His heart squeezes in his chest. “Oh, god, I’m in love with him.”

When Foggy manages to look up, the others are watching him with concern. That seems appropriate, because he himself is also very concerned, beneath the numbness of his shock.

“Oh, Foggy Bear…” Marci sighs. “I’m sorry. I thought you just didn’t want to admit it out loud. I never realized you didn’t actually _know_.”

Foggy takes a shaky breath, squeezes his eyes shut until he’s sure he’s not gonna start crying.

“This sucks,” he says, trying to make light of it and failing epically when his voice breaks.

Even though she looks the most uncomfortable, Misty is the first to speak.

“Isn’t it better to know?”

“Not even a little,” Foggy says miserably. “Because he won’t— he wouldn’t want…”

“You don’t know that, Foggy,” Karen tells him.

But he does know that. Matt has a Type, and Foggy isn’t it. He shakes his head.

“What… What am I supposed to do now…?”

“Now,” Karen says firmly, grabbing one of his hands and lacing their fingers together, “we go have our girls’ day out.”

It’s Marci’s turn to choose, so Foggy expects to spend the afternoon day-drinking away his feelings. Instead, he ends up at an animal shelter.

Marci does not like dogs, but she’s very partial to kittens, and doesn’t even seem to mind all the fur getting on her designer clothes. Meanwhile, Karen spends her time making goofy cooing noises to a particularly happy pit bull, and Misty plays fetch with an excitable golden retriever.

“It’s just like Danny,” she jokes, startling a laugh out of Foggy for the first time since his unfortunate realization.

For his own part, Foggy plays a little with as many of the animals as he can, but he’s especially fond of an orange tabby that likes to pounce off of high places. Because of course that’s the one that catches his eye, right? Foggy is, he’s beginning to realize, completely hopeless.

Truthfully, though, hanging out with Misty, Karen, Marci, and the animals does manage to do a good job of keeping his mind off the whole Matt Thing entirely — right up until they drop him off at his apartment. Afterwards, well, there’s nothing to distract him. Foggy spends the evening moping, and maybe eats too much ice cream before curling up under the covers and taking an early night.

* * *

He wakes at what the red numbers on his alarm clock assure him is 3:17am. There’s a rapid, ceaseless knocking on his window. Foggy takes a good five seconds to groan into his pillow and then forces himself to get up.

However, he’s barely climbed out of his bed before he’s tackled back into it. A very familiar idiot in a black mask is pinning him to the sheets, gloved hands on his shoulders, knees bracketing his hips.

“Foggy, Foggy—”

“Matt what the fuck?” Foggy wheezes, because— really, what the fuck?

Matt rips off his mask and throws it somewhere. He’s grinning like an idiot, and even in the low light Foggy can tell that the look in his eyes is tender but exhilarated.

“You’re in love with me?” Matt asks, breathless and giddy.

The combination of those words with that unexpected tone means Foggy has to give his brain a few seconds to reboot before he can reply.

“I. I’m. Yes?”

Matt’s smile becomes somehow more dazzling.

“Good,” he says, like a big dork, and tugs Foggy up into a kiss.

It’s a good kiss. Like, a really good kiss. So good that maybe it takes Foggy a few minutes of really good kissing and one pinch to his own arm to be sure it’s not a dream.

Eventually, probably because it’s literally 3:30 in the freaking morning, Matt flops himself down on Foggy’s chest and his ardor cools into sleepy, catlike nuzzling.

“I love you too,” he offers at last, about fifteen minutes after he really ought to have, still pressing tiny kisses to Foggy’s throat.

Foggy can only laugh and gather him closer, disbelief and joy fizzing in his chest like soda.

“Yeah. I kind of figured.”

* * *

It’s 8:42 the next morning when Foggy thinks to ask what exactly tipped Matt off about his feelings. Matt’s posture gets cagey and sheepish.

“What?” Foggy asks. “Is it really that bad?”

“Well…”

Matt pulls his cell phone out of his pocket and holds it out for Foggy to take. After some silent prompting, Foggy accepts it and navigates to voicemail amidst the narration of the phone’s screen reader. There’s one message. Cautiously, Foggy clicks play.

“Hey!” Marci’s voice says loudly. “ _Hey_! Answer your _phone_ Murdock, I know you don’t _sleep_! _Fucker_.”

She’s pretty clearly drunk. The voicemail only gets more angry and incoherent from there; Foggy’s pretty sure she calls Matt ‘Wal-Mart brand white bread’ at one point, which… Ouch. But she also says a lot of sappy stuff about Foggy deserving the world. And then it returns to the insults when she says that if Matt wasn’t ‘too busy cultivating a greasy Castaway beard’ he would have admitted his ‘stupid, stu— smoof— smooch— schmoopy, _that’s_ the one, _schmoopy_ ’ feelings by now because Foggy loves him too and they’re both big idiots making themselves sad for no reason.

“Ah,” Foggy murmurs when the message finally, finally ends. “Well. That’s… Something.”

Matt nods, chokes out a laugh.

“Pretty much,” he agrees.

“Um. I… I’m really sorry about her.”

“No. I, um… I’m glad. You know. That she called,” Matt tells him, and wow that earnest face is too intense for Foggy’s poor weak heart. “I.” Matt straightens his shoulders, takes a deep breath. “I love you.”

“Yeah,” Foggy says wonderingly. “You do, don’t you?”

He can see it now, on Matt’s face — and he suddenly realizes it’s been there a long time, that part of Matt’s indescribable beauty, his Matt-ness, is… Being-in-love-with-Foggy-ness. That Foggy makes Matt as happy as Matt makes him.

“ _Foggy_ ,” Matt whines, mouth curling down into a slight pout.

“What?” And then it hits him. “Oh! Right. Yeah. I love you too, Matty.”

And like magic, like the flash of sunlight reflecting off glass, it’s back again — Matt’s perfect smile.


End file.
